Thirty years ago, I met a Frenchman who lived in Kent and was on the dole. He had to sign on every two weeks. He was also registered as unemployed in France, where he signed on once a month.
So each month he would cross the ferry in his van, laden with... upright pianos. As you already know, pianos were much popular in …

COMMENTS

welcome

Welcome to Globalisation, where artifical distortions in the market created by corporations and governments are leveled out by people looking to make a tidy profit.

If a company decides to over price and under supply one region it's only logical that a region that has a larger cheaper supply will be tapped.

It's as obvious with phones and electronics as it is with movies and games (although movies and games are pirated instead of exported mostly. Although I've bought my share of cheap series box sets from the states.)

Look at all the Europeans that went/sent their mates to the states to pick up an ipad/iphone before they were released over here. Same happens with any gadget that gets a staggered release.

If the companies released everywhere with similar prices and stock levels that equally supply the demand (or equally under supply demand) then people wont do these things because they arn't profitable.

Probably...

I bought one from the Apple Store in Bristol a couple of weeks ago - I rang to see if they had any in about 10:30am and they'd just had a bunch turn up. I hotfoooted it down there to find an already-lengthy queue predominantly made of up swarthy-looking non-anglo-saxon types all paying £1200 in either £20 or £50 notes for two unlocked 32GB models.

My apologies of course for the steroetypical Mail-esque racial profiling but they didn't exactly look like your typical Apple user....

small world

I can't imagine Apple wants to do it this way

Apple has simply been unable to keep production up with demand, so they have staggered the release. This is partly a consequence of the way they structure their product line (one blockbuster product release of one model once a year, whereas many competitors release far more models and let a new one trickle out every few months) and it's partly a consequence of getting production levels wrong for this product, which may be as much about suppliers having problems as Apple directly.

I'm sure Apple would prefer to have enough for the whole world at once. They would make more money that way.

I've made a few hundred quid myself buying iPhone 4s and selling them to Russians on eBay. (The opportunity to do this has now gone, but a couple of months back it was a nice little earner). There's nothing wrong with this at all. I've even made a couple of Russians happy, and they need this more than we do.

Free trade...

...until the EU make it illegal (again). When a company causes a price disparity (either through malice, collusion or ineptitude) a free market will self-correct to a large extent. This story (if tru; it's the Mail FFS) is simply an example of that happening.

It doesn't always happen in reverse though, sometimes the people who are meant to protect free trade and an open market (e.g. the EU) are to kill it off. This is why you can't buy cheap Levi's, CDs, DVDs etc from outside the EU anyone. The government has decided the free market is no longer in your interest.

Profiteering

Seems like a lot of indians queueing up in Regent Street the times I've been there - they've obviously been paid to get them in order to beat the customer limit. They all pay in cash and don't look like typical tech/fashion savvy users!

British phones for Biritish people

El Reg fails at investigating the story and goes for racist card

There is actually a lot of truth in this mail/telegraph story, I myself have queued outside Regent St, Covent Garden and the Westfield centre Apple shops only to see these huge queues 200+ of mostly ragged looking indians each day (I tried 3 days in a row before giving up), for the most part they turn up way after you, jump the queue next to their gang mates, argue/fight with the other gangs and often intimidate people in the queue. I saw the same faces over and over each morning and was told by the security guards that they start queueing at 9pm the previous evening. Whatever stocks those Apple stores get I can assure you that not a single phone is making it to a uk customer who actually wants it for themselves.

Whilst I accept that its a market correction that was bound to happen due to the pathetic supply and purchase system that apple has in place, I dont accept that decent people should be hounded, intimidated and forced to queue all night when a simple mechanism for ensuring payment by card only and 1 phone per card would resolve this.

In the end I gave up and decided to go for an Android Galaxy S and am very happy with it!

Realisation dawns

Consumers v. Corporations

When we exercise our market freedoms, we are guilty of shopping at the 'grey market'. When corporation offshore much of their production and/or services - they are being efficient. I normally reject the term 'grey market' because of exactly this - there's nothing grey about it at all, just that the corporations don't want you to enjoy the freedoms that they do.

Good article, Drew

Xenophobic? WTF??

And how did you make that leap dear? The Daily Mail and El Reg report on a factual matter and just because the report mentions foreign people you pull out the Race Card? How completely pathetic and immature. Why don't you grow yourself a pair and just deal with life as it is.

The fact is that these queues are there, people (including British-hating xenophiles like yourself) can go along any day of the week and see them there. They are disadvantaging bona fide IK customers, fact. So whats this then? Too many facts for your intellect to handle?

I got mine from Singapore

as it was the cheapest place globally taking into account exchange rates, and conveniently I have a friend that works there. So off to the Singapore Apple store, enter my details and card number, ship to my mate and then have him ship it over to me. Ok, so the iPhone 4 isn't sold here yet (been 'coming soon' forever now) and at the time the local apple store and operators were still selling the 3GS for over 150 quid more than I could get the iPhone 4 from Singapore. Wish I had ordered 2, as selling the 2nd one on the grey market would have covered more than 50% of the cost of the one I bought for myself :-) ahh well opportunity missed.